Guild Wars 2

Mainly cause I was curious how Keen Edges would work with it as well.

Loaded up full Rabid Gear, with Corruption Sigils, Superior sigil of earth, and using Sharpened Edges.

Basically same premise as my Rampager’s LB/SB build but with traps.

I’m using undead runes with it, so sitting at 1975 Condition damage with my food/crystals (which means probably 2000 or close to it with the T6 ones)

Damage wise its pretty silly, the Burn is around 825 damage for a tic for both Bonfire and Flame Trap… Bleeds are around 145 a tic… and you can apply a lot of them…Because you’re sitting at 51% crit chance with this build Bonfire tends to also apply bleeds as well as burning (cause it can crit, and apply the Sigil+Sharpened Edges+Keen if they’re below 50%)

Splitblade I’ve seen apply 8-10 bleeds if I land direct hits because of the same combination.

I honestly thought i took out Supply Camps pretty fast before with my old PI build…but the speed at which I crap on supply camps now is just silly…

Zerg Fights are so so…..I’m thinking maybe a shortbow would be better in that case, Though Axe is same range.. so probably wouldn’t matter.

10/30/30/0/0 is build i’m running…..

Xsorus.2507:

Mainly cause I was curious how Keen Edges would work with it as well.

Loaded up full Rabid Gear, with Corruption Sigils, Superior sigil of earth, and using Sharpened Edges.

Basically same premise as my Rampager’s LB/SB build but with traps.

I’m using undead runes with it, so sitting at 1975 Condition damage with my food/crystals (which means probably 2000 or close to it with the T6 ones)

Damage wise its pretty silly, the Burn is around 825 damage for a tic for both Bonfire and Flame Trap… Bleeds are around 145 a tic… and you can apply a lot of them…Because you’re sitting at 51% crit chance with this build Bonfire tends to also apply bleeds as well as burning (cause it can crit, and apply the Sigil+Sharpened Edges+Keen if they’re below 50%)

Splitblade I’ve seen apply 8-10 bleeds if I land direct hits because of the same combination.

I honestly thought i took out Supply Camps pretty fast before with my old PI build…but the speed at which I crap on supply camps now is just silly…

Zerg Fights are so so…..I’m thinking maybe a shortbow would be better in that case, Though Axe is same range.. so probably wouldn’t matter.

10/30/30/0/0 is build i’m running…..

How hard does Entangle hit for now ? Must be obscene and almost clear the camp on it’s own.

Very simular to what I’ve been using for a few weeks now, although I am still using meladru runes with emphatic bond for the epic trolling of other condition builds, and it helps somewhat with the lack on a stun breaker / stability.

It is a lot of fun I find.. working on buying the condition damage / toughness / vita ascended trinkets to go with it

Entangle is 36k Damage alone, just from its bleeds, That’s not counting the other Bleeds i believe it’ll do from Sigil and Sharpened Edges

Its hard actually testing the damage.

Hey Xsorus!

What utilities are you running atm as in all three traps or…?And which pets?(cc pets like the wolf etc?). Can’t wait to try it out!

Flame/Spike Trap are the ones i’m running with signet of the hunt…I’m still not completely certain on the best setup to be honest.

Drakes are still my pet, as they still do great damage with zero BM.

I’ve not decided which I like best on geomancy and sigil of earth..Sigil of Earth is nice because it basically gives my Axe a chance to proc bleeds..Which makes it like a poormans Short bow.

Thanks!
I think it’s a good plan to put earth sigil on your axe because the bonfire will also proc the bleed and geomancy on your sword dagger combo. I’ll probably put geomancy on both and earth on the axe/torch combo and corruption on my sword/dagger. Although it’s annoying that’ll have to switch weapons to get a corruption stack on kill…

Captain Obvious.7821:

Thanks!
I think it’s a good plan to put earth sigil on your axe because the bonfire will also proc the bleed and geomancy on your sword dagger combo. I’ll probably put geomancy on both and earth on the axe/torch combo and corruption on my sword/dagger. Although it’s annoying that’ll have to switch weapons to get a corruption stack on kill…

Take 5 mins to get 25 stacks before you start roaming or whatever it is you do. Make it faster by have 2 weapons with corruption on them.

would this build be good for PvE?

Depends on how you define good…I mean it can do a stupid amount of condition damage, But if you’re talking dungeon speed runs, Power builds will always generally be better then Condition Builds.

I mean if you don’t care for that, then yes, It can be fine in dungeons just like about any other build can

Captain Obvious.7821:

Thanks!
I think it’s a good plan to put earth sigil on your axe because the bonfire will also proc the bleed and geomancy on your sword dagger combo. I’ll probably put geomancy on both and earth on the axe/torch combo and corruption on my sword/dagger. Although it’s annoying that’ll have to switch weapons to get a corruption stack on kill…

You won’t proc Sigil of Earth if Geomancy is on cooldown.

I’m thinking Sigil might be better for a trap build like this, because Bonfire just spits out so much damage, even the traps themselves will do it also.

I got to zerg around with the build some, it’s honestly not super great at that…Zerg fights are usually over in seconds….Before I can even get close enough to throw a trap at someone the zerg as already murdered them and killed them after being downed…

Longbow rampager was kind of the same way, unless I fired at them before the zerg hit them, I didn’t get many kills because the zerg just ate everyone in seconds with melee cleaving.

I’d just like to add, since you already mentioned that bonfire can trigger the bleeds from Sharpening Stone, that a traited bonfire can hit only a max of 3 targets per “wave,” but it only uses 1 charge of SS.

Not sure about flame trap, are you sure it can crit? Because that would be insane with the right Sigil of Earth and Sharpened Edges :O

Be great to see this in a full build editor.

I’m pretty sure flame trap can crit, I managed to get it to do it, thing is, I don’t know how its Crit is decided, it seemed to crit far less often then bonfire did

(Just tested it again to make sure, and for sure 100% that Flame Trap can crit, along with Spike Trap)

Also tested Flame trap, it doesn’t eat up all of Keen Edges either, just like bonfire.

But yea they all can crit and all apply bleeds + keen edges

Bombsaway.7198:

Be great to see this in a full build editor.

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-F;4sEku-t2gEF-0;9k7Z;19TT;02;017A06A;4KNH4a;1NX8aNX8aP0FN7Kq2U;2i-m0r1wY1_759eWPk4R0;9;9;6FFFFFF;9;9;7V6s5y

Yeah, my thoughts were to run a build like that, although I’m trying out a spirit build as well. With only needing 2 traits to run spirits now, it’s much better.

Basically, I run sun spirit, signet of the wild, and earth spirit. With 30% boon duration instead of taking the 33% longer regen trait I just take prot proc on taking greater than 10% of your health.

The sun spirit is just giving you a similar option to the engineer and necromancer trait of proccing a burn with your attacks, so I don’t have to worry about people cionstantly dodging my throw torch in duels. Earth spirit gives me 4 sec prot every 10 seconds, thanks to nature magic traitline I sit at 19-20k hp.

I run raven so he casts his own swiftness and doesn’t need signet or trait to have uptime on target, and with rampage as one i am sharing even more swiftness with my pet. My alternate is either wolf or spider, both have good cc.

I just wish we had better options for stun breaks. Signet of the Wild is a whopping 60 sec cd, and I really need it for the condi clear or engineers walk all over me.

I’m still running healing power though as it is a big part of my team utility.

Really, what we lost was the pet damage but my pets were not hitting anyone who knew to kite them to begin with, so I might as well look at the options.

With the sun spirit it’s not also you proccing the burning, but your pet as well, and with both earth and sun spirit you can get an aoe blind or a root/cripple field.

I’m still running geomancy. I like the on demand 3 stacks so I can keep conditions covered from too much cleansing.

Most people worth their salt never stand on my bonfire to begin with and throw torch is so telegraphed it gets dodged 24/7.

Between me and the pet it’s 6-7 seconds of burn procs every 10 seconds on top of the burning sources I have so the uptime on burning is much betetr against classes that cleanse.

I think it’d be neat to see how this build does with companions might instead of sharpened edges. Make it more of a hybrid dmg dealer with super strong conditions & power dmg.

You ain’t going to be stacking much might as it’s a 5 sec duration.

Companions might work some what, I’m not certain…. But yea its only 5 second Duration so it’s not much….The bleed from Sharpened Edges is 1 second I believe with this build instead of the 2 seconds with my Rampager’s Spec, however it basically ends up being an extra 145 damage that pretty much all your attacks have a chance of doing, So it’s not that bad.

I’m still trying to figure out how I go the Bleed proc that I got earlier on Split blade, I ended up going from 2 bleed stack, to instantly getting an 18 stack of bleed from one split blade.

5 – splitblade
5 – Sharpened Edges (assuming all of them crit and bleed)
1 – Sharpening Stone (because of the bug)

So that’s 11 out of the 16 you’re looking for. What offhand were you using? What pet were you using? Maybe you got the 5 from it?

Sigil would be 5 also, so its possible to hit 16 I believe,

That’d give me the 18 I saw.

I had pet on passive.

I did some testing on this long ago, i’m pretty sure it still works the same way.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Trap-Potency-Question/first#post862281

How does it fare against good thief? Do we have a chance to withstand their crits before they bleed/burn to death?

try double tapping a movement key to counter a thief.

Diehard.1432:

How does it fare against good thief? Do we have a chance to withstand their crits before they bleed/burn to death?

Traps are an excellent counter to thieves, I run condition trapper in PvP and can’t remember the last time a thief beat me in a square 1v1. WvW is different of course, but in sPvP with three traps on the ground and traps off cooldown thieves don’t stand a chance. It’s also a lot harder for them to get away, as you can bomb them with ground targeted traps if they pop stealth.

Hi Xsorus, I’m a fellow ranger, and I’ve been following you, Faux and others for months now, even tho I don’t main the class. Since the patch I moved from BM to trapper aswell, mostly due to the fact that I found myself still sturdy, but incredibly slow at killing.

While the damage output on pure trapper is far better, I didn’t want to completly lose my survivability, and started playing an hybrid trapper/beastmaster build . It’s possible to swap from hybrid trapper to a sort of offensive BM changing some trait: build .

I tend to use Blood/Energy sigils after I collected 25 stacks of either condition damage or healing power. That way I compensate the lower regen from signet while doing better dps.

I would like to know if you ever tried it, and what you think about it.

Thanks!

Diehard.1432:

How does it fare against good thief? Do we have a chance to withstand their crits before they bleed/burn to death?

Shadow Arts thieves won’t die to traps due to how much cleanse they have.

S/D thieves will just evade all over them with flanking spam.

Zenith.7301:

Diehard.1432:

How does it fare against good thief? Do we have a chance to withstand their crits before they bleed/burn to death?

Shadow Arts thieves won’t die to traps due to how much cleanse they have.

S/D thieves will just evade all over them with flanking spam.

How do you evade something you can’t see? If they trigger a stack of poison, flame, and spike the odds are already tipped well in your favor, even if they cleanse immediately. You can drop the next round of traps at or around your feet once they get in your face, so they have to sit through three more traps (remember, they pulse) plus your torch bonfire to melee you. In the meantime, you have your two sword evades plus dodges to burn their initiative and avoid damage, high toughness from rabid gear, and support from your pet, whichever you may have chosen. I really don’t find thieves problematic in comparison to other classes, at least in sPvP.

Well.. I am more interested in WvW. I know rangers are solid enough in sPvP. But its a whole different story here in wvw

That’s true, but the trapper build for spvp can be used for wvw roaming, just don’t expect to win many 1v3s. It’s no good against zergs though, I like berserker LB/GS for that but I’m sure many will disagree.

Tricare.2946:

Captain Obvious.7821:

Thanks!
I think it’s a good plan to put earth sigil on your axe because the bonfire will also proc the bleed and geomancy on your sword dagger combo. I’ll probably put geomancy on both and earth on the axe/torch combo and corruption on my sword/dagger. Although it’s annoying that’ll have to switch weapons to get a corruption stack on kill…

Take 5 mins to get 25 stacks before you start roaming or whatever it is you do. Make it faster by have 2 weapons with corruption on them.

I used to do this, never anymore it’s a total jinx on yourself everytime you do this you get squashed into jelly by an invisible zerg travelling at the speed of light.

Daemon.4295:

Zenith.7301:

Diehard.1432:

How does it fare against good thief? Do we have a chance to withstand their crits before they bleed/burn to death?

Shadow Arts thieves won’t die to traps due to how much cleanse they have.

S/D thieves will just evade all over them with flanking spam.

How do you evade something you can’t see? If they trigger a stack of poison, flame, and spike the odds are already tipped well in your favor, even if they cleanse immediately. You can drop the next round of traps at or around your feet once they get in your face, so they have to sit through three more traps (remember, they pulse) plus your torch bonfire to melee you. In the meantime, you have your two sword evades plus dodges to burn their initiative and avoid damage, high toughness from rabid gear, and support from your pet, whichever you may have chosen. I really don’t find thieves problematic in comparison to other classes, at least in sPvP.

I can pretty much in my spec chain 6 flanking>larcenous combos. When each of those is still critting1.8-2k toughness people for at least 3-4k, you ain’t going to survive it. You can hold on to larcenous when they’ve wasted their sword skills.

Force them to waste traps, shadow return back, then go back in. Just steady pressure.

Zenith.7301:

Daemon.4295:

Zenith.7301:

Diehard.1432:

How does it fare against good thief? Do we have a chance to withstand their crits before they bleed/burn to death?

Shadow Arts thieves won’t die to traps due to how much cleanse they have.

S/D thieves will just evade all over them with flanking spam.

How do you evade something you can’t see? If they trigger a stack of poison, flame, and spike the odds are already tipped well in your favor, even if they cleanse immediately. You can drop the next round of traps at or around your feet once they get in your face, so they have to sit through three more traps (remember, they pulse) plus your torch bonfire to melee you. In the meantime, you have your two sword evades plus dodges to burn their initiative and avoid damage, high toughness from rabid gear, and support from your pet, whichever you may have chosen. I really don’t find thieves problematic in comparison to other classes, at least in sPvP.

I can pretty much in my spec chain 6 flanking>larcenous combos. When each of those is still critting1.8-2k toughness people for at least 3-4k, you ain’t going to survive it. You can hold on to larcenous when they’ve wasted their sword skills.

Force them to waste traps, shadow return back, then go back in. Just steady pressure.

You forget about good use of canine cc and timed evasion skills for someone who knows what to dodge from a thief class.

The problem with your thief is that you critical 3-4k if you manage to land a hit. A good Ranger will be evade spamming enough so most of your hits don’t land. With how glassy a thief is a single round of traps left uncleansed will usually kill a thief.

Ryan.8367:

Zenith.7301:

Daemon.4295:

Zenith.7301:

Diehard.1432:

How does it fare against good thief? Do we have a chance to withstand their crits before they bleed/burn to death?

Shadow Arts thieves won’t die to traps due to how much cleanse they have.

S/D thieves will just evade all over them with flanking spam.

How do you evade something you can’t see? If they trigger a stack of poison, flame, and spike the odds are already tipped well in your favor, even if they cleanse immediately. You can drop the next round of traps at or around your feet once they get in your face, so they have to sit through three more traps (remember, they pulse) plus your torch bonfire to melee you. In the meantime, you have your two sword evades plus dodges to burn their initiative and avoid damage, high toughness from rabid gear, and support from your pet, whichever you may have chosen. I really don’t find thieves problematic in comparison to other classes, at least in sPvP.

I can pretty much in my spec chain 6 flanking>larcenous combos. When each of those is still critting1.8-2k toughness people for at least 3-4k, you ain’t going to survive it. You can hold on to larcenous when they’ve wasted their sword skills.

Force them to waste traps, shadow return back, then go back in. Just steady pressure.

You forget about good use of canine cc and timed evasion skills for someone who knows what to dodge from a thief class.

You mean hat random dog leap on my thief who gets 3 dodges baseline from feline grace, has sigils of energy on both his weaponsets, and gets a 10 sec vigor (which stacks with feline grace, unlike ranger endurance regen trait) on a short 15 sec cd heal that also evades?

Ryan.9387:

The problem with your thief is that you critical 3-4k if you manage to land a hit. A good Ranger will be evade spamming enough so most of your hits don’t land. With how glassy a thief is a single round of traps left uncleansed will usually kill a thief.

You’ve got 2 evades on sword and dagger, with monarch’s leap for a more delayed disengaged. Anytime you don’t have those you are rooted by my infiltrator’s strike.

I’ve got cleansing on shadow return and on a 24 sec cd signet. I’ve got cleansing every 45 sec from basilisk venom and runes of lyssa.

Why is this suddenly a thief vs ranger discussion? Back to traps please.

I used Sword to Disengage after landing my traps… as for a Sword/Dagger Thief, i only fought one, and I did win the fight….The amount of Conditions i applied was just to much for him.

Granted that doesn’t mean a better play couldn’t just wreck me, the lack of healing is noticeable.

Though if i really wanted I could just go BM and poop on S/D thieves all day, so really doesn’t matter

Zenith.7301:

Ryan.8367:

Zenith.7301:

Daemon.4295:

Zenith.7301:

Diehard.1432:

How does it fare against good thief? Do we have a chance to withstand their crits before they bleed/burn to death?

Shadow Arts thieves won’t die to traps due to how much cleanse they have.

S/D thieves will just evade all over them with flanking spam.

How do you evade something you can’t see? If they trigger a stack of poison, flame, and spike the odds are already tipped well in your favor, even if they cleanse immediately. You can drop the next round of traps at or around your feet once they get in your face, so they have to sit through three more traps (remember, they pulse) plus your torch bonfire to melee you. In the meantime, you have your two sword evades plus dodges to burn their initiative and avoid damage, high toughness from rabid gear, and support from your pet, whichever you may have chosen. I really don’t find thieves problematic in comparison to other classes, at least in sPvP.

I can pretty much in my spec chain 6 flanking>larcenous combos. When each of those is still critting1.8-2k toughness people for at least 3-4k, you ain’t going to survive it. You can hold on to larcenous when they’ve wasted their sword skills.

Force them to waste traps, shadow return back, then go back in. Just steady pressure.

You forget about good use of canine cc and timed evasion skills for someone who knows what to dodge from a thief class.

You mean hat random dog leap on my thief who gets 3 dodges baseline from feline grace, has sigils of energy on both his weaponsets, and gets a 10 sec vigor (which stacks with feline grace, unlike ranger endurance regen trait) on a short 15 sec cd heal that also evades?

Good job explaining how op your class is defensively while maintaining high crit burst but besides all that glorious stuff you explained , I’d still probably beat you in a duel which is the bad part. :*(

Ryan.8367:

Zenith.7301:

Ryan.8367:

Zenith.7301:

Daemon.4295:

Zenith.7301:

Diehard.1432:

How does it fare against good thief? Do we have a chance to withstand their crits before they bleed/burn to death?

Shadow Arts thieves won’t die to traps due to how much cleanse they have.

S/D thieves will just evade all over them with flanking spam.

How do you evade something you can’t see? If they trigger a stack of poison, flame, and spike the odds are already tipped well in your favor, even if they cleanse immediately. You can drop the next round of traps at or around your feet once they get in your face, so they have to sit through three more traps (remember, they pulse) plus your torch bonfire to melee you. In the meantime, you have your two sword evades plus dodges to burn their initiative and avoid damage, high toughness from rabid gear, and support from your pet, whichever you may have chosen. I really don’t find thieves problematic in comparison to other classes, at least in sPvP.

I can pretty much in my spec chain 6 flanking>larcenous combos. When each of those is still critting1.8-2k toughness people for at least 3-4k, you ain’t going to survive it. You can hold on to larcenous when they’ve wasted their sword skills.

Force them to waste traps, shadow return back, then go back in. Just steady pressure.

You forget about good use of canine cc and timed evasion skills for someone who knows what to dodge from a thief class.

You mean hat random dog leap on my thief who gets 3 dodges baseline from feline grace, has sigils of energy on both his weaponsets, and gets a 10 sec vigor (which stacks with feline grace, unlike ranger endurance regen trait) on a short 15 sec cd heal that also evades?

Good job explaining how op your class is defensively while maintaining high crit burst but besides all that glorious stuff you explained , I’d still probably beat you in a duel which is the bad part. :*(

It is not my class. It’s an alt I adopted after I’ve waited for 10 months for them to fix my ranger so I don’t have to run a toughness condition set with sword mainhand to just not be a free kill.

The difference between thief and BM is my thief is actually useful when you enter a team fight. I’m cleaving people with 3-4k just from sword autoattacks, I can strip bunkers clean of boons for my team really quickly, or I can harass their backline.

BM ranger was only really good for roaming, maybe duels (there were still classes you could not kill, like a good condi engineer with immunity to conditions at 25% trait). it was already crap in team fights. It was already crap on any build for dungeons. And yet because of spvp tears they took a sledgehammer to the awful pets.

So, I just got on with the program and instead of hoping for a development epiphany, just switched characters even after all the gold I’ve invested on my Ranger. Now with my thief I run dungeons pretty happily, I roam amazingly, I can do team fights, and it’s miles away from my experience on the ranger. If I get bored of thief for wvw team fights I just switch to my necro and voila suddenly I’m the best team class around or I can switch to my staff ele or guardian.

Either way, the point is you’ll wait longer for the ranger to be fixed than you’ll wait just getting other toons to 80 and gearing them up.

I gave a go for this last night while roaming with a small group of my guildies and I had quite a lot of fun, even in big fights I was able to do pretty nicely. I did some changes to the build to suit my own & guilds playstyle tho:
0/30/30/10/0, apo ascended trinkets, GS and I swap between axe+torch & sword + warhorn depending on the trouble we get ourselves into.

I just need to learn to swap between SotH and LR before entering the battle as I found myself in the middle of a fight with no stunbreakers quite a few times and it got me killed :<

My trap ranger doesn’t have that much condition damage, about around 1.7k with full stacks as I run with a combination of settlers and apothecary gear. I’m still looking for the right balance in survivability and damage that suits how I play (mostly alone). Using a common trapper build: 0/30/30/10/0 build.

This is how it will look like when average trap rangers take camps. Not 2k-ish CD but mobs still melt. Note that it can be faster if I equip off-hand axe to deflect the blinds from the scouts and add vulnerability, and also poison trap would help reduce their heals.

Zenith.7301:

Ryan.8367:

Zenith.7301:

Ryan.8367:

Zenith.7301:

Daemon.4295:

Zenith.7301:

Diehard.1432:

How does it fare against good thief? Do we have a chance to withstand their crits before they bleed/burn to death?

Shadow Arts thieves won’t die to traps due to how much cleanse they have.

S/D thieves will just evade all over them with flanking spam.

How do you evade something you can’t see? If they trigger a stack of poison, flame, and spike the odds are already tipped well in your favor, even if they cleanse immediately. You can drop the next round of traps at or around your feet once they get in your face, so they have to sit through three more traps (remember, they pulse) plus your torch bonfire to melee you. In the meantime, you have your two sword evades plus dodges to burn their initiative and avoid damage, high toughness from rabid gear, and support from your pet, whichever you may have chosen. I really don’t find thieves problematic in comparison to other classes, at least in sPvP.

I can pretty much in my spec chain 6 flanking>larcenous combos. When each of those is still critting1.8-2k toughness people for at least 3-4k, you ain’t going to survive it. You can hold on to larcenous when they’ve wasted their sword skills.

Force them to waste traps, shadow return back, then go back in. Just steady pressure.

You forget about good use of canine cc and timed evasion skills for someone who knows what to dodge from a thief class.

You mean hat random dog leap on my thief who gets 3 dodges baseline from feline grace, has sigils of energy on both his weaponsets, and gets a 10 sec vigor (which stacks with feline grace, unlike ranger endurance regen trait) on a short 15 sec cd heal that also evades?

Good job explaining how op your class is defensively while maintaining high crit burst but besides all that glorious stuff you explained , I’d still probably beat you in a duel which is the bad part. :*(

It is not my class. It’s an alt I adopted after I’ve waited for 10 months for them to fix my ranger so I don’t have to run a toughness condition set with sword mainhand to just not be a free kill.

The difference between thief and BM is my thief is actually useful when you enter a team fight. I’m cleaving people with 3-4k just from sword autoattacks, I can strip bunkers clean of boons for my team really quickly, or I can harass their backline.

BM ranger was only really good for roaming, maybe duels (there were still classes you could not kill, like a good condi engineer with immunity to conditions at 25% trait). it was already crap in team fights. It was already crap on any build for dungeons. And yet because of spvp tears they took a sledgehammer to the awful pets.

So, I just got on with the program and instead of hoping for a development epiphany, just switched characters even after all the gold I’ve invested on my Ranger. Now with my thief I run dungeons pretty happily, I roam amazingly, I can do team fights, and it’s miles away from my experience on the ranger. If I get bored of thief for wvw team fights I just switch to my necro and voila suddenly I’m the best team class around or I can switch to my staff ele or guardian.

Either way, the point is you’ll wait longer for the ranger to be fixed than you’ll wait just getting other toons to 80 and gearing them up.

I don’t do groups, i dont do dungeons, so I guess none of this applies to me. I still own people regularly in duels/roaming, but that’s also maybe because I usually only duel against top players of their class and practice heavily with it and have since the beginning of the game. So yea, we all have our ways of playing and I chipper up when I see a thief running up on me thinking I’ll be an easy meal and then before he knows it he’s destroyed , all the same in duels. Know what to dodge and when to dodge and count initiative/stealth times while interrupting initiative gains and voila, the thief class just became an easy opponent. Same with any other, but that’s not a knock on thieves or any other class for that matter, that’s a shout out to the very easy pvp implementation Anet has provided.

I have a staff/dd ele as well and no question is the staff ele better in group/zerg play, thief as well , mesmer as well (veil, feedback, mass invis, portal, gs knockbacks, etc). I just like ranger more for my style of play.

The only Thief that’s given me trouble lately was a Condition one that I honestly wasn’t expecting, He dancing Daggered over me and my pet while throwing down caltrops, which wouldn’t be that bad..But he had just a silly amount of condition damage, His bleeds were ticing for 151…. which is just …geez

2 questions for all with trap builds out here:

1. do you consider stun breaker a must or not? Given a trap ranger usually has high toughness and maybe a protection proc.
If so: which do you prefer?

2. How do you go for speed?
Some use signet of the hunt, some use warhorn. But neither of these actually synergise well with a trap build.
Warhorn has zero condition damage, at best it boosts crit procs.
Signet of the hunt takes up a trap slot, which means you can only use 2. While I find 3 sort of logical.

My own preferences:
1. Lighting reflexes because I do big WvW fights often.
2. warhorn for lack of better ways to get speed.

But I’m really curious how you solve these issues, and mostly: why you make the choices you make.

Both interesting problems that I have contantly with my trap build, and it really depends on how you want to play and how much you want to change your skills to suit the situation.

For me, I dont take a stunbreaker. You just cant be running traps, a stun breaker and speed boosts at the same time effectively, because as you said the warhorn is a rubbish offhand and you need at least 2 traps to be a trap ranger, which leaves you only 1 slot to boost speed/stunbreak or have another trap.

Personally I use melandru runes to reduce stun durations by 25%, as well as using axe/dagger + SB weapons, which means I usually keep a good distance from my target and can evade most stuns and knockdowns. If you get focused by a group it can become an issue but generally if you keep on your toes and dont get out of possition you will be OK.

For me I use SoH as default for the speed boost but if I can see I am about to fight a 1v1 or 2v1 which I think is going to be a hard fight, I will change it out for a frost trap. Most commonly though I just stick to SoH.

You can also just use Signet of the Hunt till you find someone then swap it out for SoR or lightning reflex (even protect me might work) when you get to them, I usually find though that I can do alright without stun breaks, bout the only class that will screw me would be a 100b warrior, and i absolutely just take a dump on that class 1v1 on most of the builds I run.

As for running 3 traps, you can get by without the Poison one and the Chill one, the chill one though is nice if used, and could probably take the place of Flame Trap if using torch offhand…

Xsorus.2507:

As for running 3 traps, you can get by without the Poison one and the Chill one, the chill one though is nice if used, and could probably take the place of Flame Trap if using torch offhand…

I am not arguing those choices aren’t good by the way. I basically use a simular set-up.
But I am just curious to how other trap rangers solve these 2 issues.
That includes you of course. But since you made this post, I already had an idea of what you did

The reason I started using chill trap more, is because other people have told me that is the one trap they hate the most when fighting a ranger.
It’s funny, because it’s the only trap we have that does zero damage, heck: it doesn’t even aggro a mob if that’s all you use on it.

Poison trap does a lot of damage too, and poison helps for the reduced healing.
The main issue is that it does it’s damage very slooooowly. Where flam trap does the same in a few ticks.

The obvious choice seems spike trap and flame trap as base.
I do use torch ofhand, so I could indeed swap flame trap for chill or poison.

I usually run this in my trap build:
- axe-torch (my best condition appliers in one set, despite having no evade there)
- sword- warhorn for mobility and escape

Healing spring
Spike Trap
Flame (or snake)
Lighting Reflexes (or occasionaly chill trap)
Entangling Roots because it fits the build (even though RaO is ‘better’)

Kimbald.2697:

Xsorus.2507:

As for running 3 traps, you can get by without the Poison one and the Chill one, the chill one though is nice if used, and could probably take the place of Flame Trap if using torch offhand…

The reason I started using chill trap more, is because other people have told me that is the one trap they hate the most when fighting a ranger.
It’s funny, because it’s the only trap we have that does zero damage, heck: it doesn’t even aggro a mob if that’s all you use on it.

Poison trap does a lot of damage too, and poison helps for the reduced healing.
The main issue is that it does it’s damage very slooooowly. Where flam trap does the same in a few ticks.

The obvious choice seems spike trap and flame trap as base.
I do use torch ofhand, so I could indeed swap flame trap for chill or poison.

I usually run this in my trap build:
- axe-torch (my best condition appliers in one set, despite having no evade there)
- sword- warhorn for mobility and escape

Healing spring
Spike Trap
Flame (or snake)
Lighting Reflexes (or occasionaly chill trap)
Entangling Roots because it fits the build (even though RaO is ‘better’)

My issues with this:
1. warhorn is such a poor choice, especially in a condition build. I love those birds… but their damage is pathetic. The least they could do is cripple or chill for such a long cooldown.

2. I think 2 traps is very limiting for a ‘trap’ build.

3. Lightning reflexes is a nice jump, and having the vigor is incredibly strong as ‘side effect’ for escapping.
And it shares the lower cooldown with Entangling Roots if you trait your survival skills.
The only downsides are that it doesn’t clenase immobilized, crippled or chill, which are your main issues in bigger fights. Stuns are only half the story.
And of course: it eats a trap spot…

Sorry too tired to have read through previous posts. Anyways I play a trap ranger build, mostly pve..and a build I made myself with no online cookie cutter builds or nothin. So it probably could use some improvements lol. Anyways! In regards to skills and stuff,

I like to run with chill, flame, and spike traps generally..If I ever have to switch a skill out for some other skill, signet or whatever, chill is always the first one to go. Simply cause it does no damage. Although I started pvping a couple days ago and have been using my chill trap there (with flame and no spike) simply because one of my friends was complaining about chill in pvp and I decided to try it out.

I run with just a shortbow for pve, and I personally never use the poison trap. I have the shortbow poison skill and I normally have atleast 1 spider equipped who can deal poison damage, and I use those so I can free a utility slot for one of my other traps. I also generally run with Entangle as my elite, except for situations where Rampage as One is more beneficial. I like Entangle in pve because it immobilizes enemies (in groups, too) and does damage in itself. In my few days of pvp, it’s been okay but a lot of people manage to avoid/get out of it..but I’m still learning pvp.